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01/25/2005:

"Global poverty targeted as 100,000 gather in Brazil"

Elvis, Betu and Renatu live in a rubbish dump. Every day the teenagers take out their wire pushcarts, collect the waste of the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and bring it back to the illegal slum of Chocolatado to sort and then sell on.

It's a grim place, made of reclaimed tarpaulins, waste timber, old plastic and metal. None of the shacks have running water or toilets, and most of them are deep in litter.

This, then, is the ideal backdrop for the launch today of the World Social Forum, which meets annually to discuss issues affecting developing countries.

Begun five years ago specifically to counter the annual meeting of world business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, it has unexpectedly become a global political and social phenomenon.

More than 100,000 activists will be in Porto Alegre this year. They will be joined by two presidents, several Nobel peace and literature prizewinners, the world's leading international non-government groups, healthworkers, MPs, educators, unions, students, the landless, indigenous peoples, intellectuals, environmentalists and dissident economists.

"It's not perfect, but it is the most tangible global rejection of the neo-liberal globalisation policies of the US and G8 countries," said Ricardo Jimenez, a Uruguyan doctor.

"But it needs to be seen in context. More than 1 billion people in developing countries live in slums; 800 million go hungry every day; 27 million adults are slaves; 245 million children have to work. The poor are everywhere still getting poorer, the cities are disintegrating and bankrupt. It is a response to a global scandal."
Full Article: guardian.co.uk